Blog

January, 2012

Looking inside a computer – a
lesson in hardware, 3D design and more

Have you ever taken apart a Mac
laptop? Apple laptops are not designed to disassemble easily; it takes
work. With the help of my teenage son, I split open an old broken Mac laptop
and took it into my class. I teach Computer Science to all 6th graders in
a California public school district, the Los Altos School District in the San
Francisco bay area.

Computer Science? In sixth
grade? In a public school district? Yes, this comes as a surprise to anyone
who asks me what I do. The Los Altos school district has fully embraced
technology in the classroom – online math with the Khan academy, reading using
iPads in lower grades, collaborative homework assignments using Google docs and
much more.

And for the last 3 years, the Los
Altos school district is also teaching its students to go beyond just being
consumers of technology; become creators with technology. An important step in that process is to
learn about technology, what is inside a computer and how can you program a
computer to create anything you want - simple computer science concepts.

When I showed the 6th graders
that my pretty white Mac laptop was just an empty plastic shell, they were
definitely listening. “The
'computer insides' are in this Ziploc bag and we are going to study
them”. I pulled out the various parts from my bag, explaining concepts
like motherboard, RAM, CPU, and hard disk.

The students were fascinated by
the motherboard, it complexity and its beauty. Maybe due to my focus on art in
many of my technology projects in the past, they were looking and discussing
the pattern of the lines and the colors and shapes of the components. There
were a lot of excited comments and questions - "The motherboard
looks like a city.", This CPU could be Walmart, and this chip here is the
school and these lines are the roads.... "., "What does this
chip do?". Besides the Mac laptop motherboard, I also brought into the
classroom some old PC motherboards as well as a few extra components like hard
drives and a broken CPU. I explained to them that they could go shopping for
parts to make a computer themselves. “The next time you go to Frys, ask for the
aisle for motherboards.”

Once the students understood a
little about computer hardware, they spent time examining and drawing the
motherboard in their notebooks.
Along with learning computer hardware, these students were learning the
art of drawing from observation, and the ability to simplify something that is
complex. Students were told they had to draw the components discussed in the
class. They could choose to ignore or add any of the rest of the information.

In the next lesson, students used
their pencil drawings to create a 3D model on the computer using Google
SketchUp. Google SketchUp is a 3D modeling tool and can be used effectively for
many school projects. It is available both in a free and a paid version
at http://sketchup.google.com/ The students had used Google SketchUp
to design houses in my Digital Design class in 5th grade and using it to convert 2D shapes into a 3D
component was relatively easy.

Students were encouraged to use
their own interpretation and creativity in creating the 3D model; they did not
have to make it look exactly like the original. "Can it be any color we
want?" was a popular question, and many wanted the 3D model to have colors
they liked. Students decided on their own way of doing the project. Some
quickly made the blocks and labeled them, others went back several times to the
physical motherboard in the classroom to re-check their drawing and counted out
the exact number of components and relative sizes. The completed models were
labeled and then exported from SketchUp to a 2D image and then added to the
student's Google site as part of their e-Portfolio for the class. Samples of
the projects are at

After the hardware class,
students came up and talked about broken computers at home that they hoped to
take apart. Few students brought in motherboards from other devices - a
broken Xbox and a smart phone for example. These students were now seeing
something that they had never noticed before. ­­­­­

We spend a lot of time working
with computers; admiring the sleek lines and shiny finishes and of course the
snappy applications and pretty graphics. We do not see the fascinating world
inside. These students were given a chance to appreciate what lies underneath
the hood.; maybe some of them will be part of Silicon Valley’s history of
innovative hardware designers.